i·de·a·mat·ter

I didn’t know her until that night. 

For the past three months, she was someone I would see on my daily commute to school. Almost every morning, sitting across from me on the train, she would be there. I don’t know why my eyes always ended up falling on her, but her distinct appearance—in particular the way she dressed—was probably one reason. It wasn’t common to see young women dressed in vintage suits in that part of the city, and even less so for them to forgo skirts and heels in favor of trousers and oxfords. Rather than a purse or suitcase, she always held a long, cylindrical bag close to her, as if it contained something of great sentimental importance. I don’t remember the first time I saw her, nor the first time I noticed her. Without my realizing it, she had become a fixture of my routine, and it was only one of the days she wasn’t there that I realized, in her absence, that I had come to see her this way. I wouldn’t say I was upset by this, but the question of where she was did nag at me slightly throughout the day, and it was a relief to see her the next morning in her rightful place.

After a few weeks of seeing her on a regular basis, and too shy to say anything, I began making up stories in my head about who she might be, and what she might do for a living. She didn’t look much older than I was, but she clearly had somewhere more important to be than school. Possibilities ranging from young businesswoman to fashion model, and even more outlandish ideas like spy or gangster all presented themselves as equally probable for all I knew about her. The only certain things were her appearance and this small part of her daily routine. Everything else was purely hypothetical.

To be clear, she wasn’t the first person I had done this with. As someone to whom shyness was no stranger, striking up conversations had never been one of my talents, and I felt more comfortable fading into the backdrop of wherever I found myself, observing and not interacting. Living in the city meant people-watching was always an interesting way to pass the time, and when you felt like a natural-born outsider, there wasn’t much else to do. I had slipped into a state in which all that existed was myself, and those I saw and even interacted with daily were no more real than the characters on the page of a comic book, thus rendering all of humanity simple extensions of my own mind, existing solely for my entertainment. While I had come to look forward to the certainty of sitting across from her, I knew it was only temporary. One day, she was sure to change jobs, move to another part of the city, or buy a car and drive herself to wherever she was going, and I would never see her again. She would become just another one of the many faces I had fixated on, projected my overactive imagination onto, and vanished like a distant dream.

How could I have even begun to speculate how our paths would intertwine, in ways that to me felt consequential and world-changing, but to her… How could I ever be anything more than an inconvenience in her world?

Of the many facts that hold true in both science and mysticism, it’s the idea that for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. From its inception, our relationship seemed like a violation of Newton’s Third Law. Her impact on my life shook me to my foundation, and made me reassess everything I thought I knew about the world and life itself. Somehow, I always felt as if she would be the same regardless of my presence.

Nevertheless, I believe my life truly began in that moment when, for the first time in my waking dream of an existence, there existed one other person in the world besides myself.

Mahnoor Jarwal.

Killer Moon.